Tech

Ford CEO Mark Fields: Betting the company on innovation

LAS VEGAS — As the still freshly minted CEO of one of the world’s largest automotive companies, Mark Fields is a very busy man. So it’s only natural that our sit-down interview would take place in the drive between two Las Vegas Hotels.

A tan and smiling Fields strode down the hallway of the Mandalay, accompanied by a handful of his Ford executives. The group swept me up with them and we headed out under a moonlit sky to his awaiting ride. Fields, who was named Ford's CEO last July, will give his first CES keynote as the company’s chief executive Tuesday morning local time.

The 25-year Ford veteran, who says he wants to “unleash the innovation in his company,” wanted to give me a preview of his remarks, which, naturally, will deal with the rebooted Sync, autonomous driving, smarter traffic management and more.

Before we began, I mentioned that in reading up on him I stumbled upon an article outlining the things he should do first as the company’s new CEO. Number 1 was to replace Ford Sync. I told him that it looked like he was done with that task.

Fields laughed, “Check.” He added that they’d been working on that for a little while, which likely meant the work to replace the Microsoft back-end with Blackberry’s QNX platform was underway while former CEO Alan Mulally was still in charge. I encouraged him to take credit for a “snap decision.” The Brooklyn-born Fields, who clearly has a sense of humor, just kept laughing.

He grew serious though as he outlined his keynote and plans for the company.

As you would expect, Tuesday morning’s keynote will showcase Ford's latest innovations.

“As we’re thinking about the company, we’re thinking about ourselves not only as car, utility and truck company, but also as a mobility company,” said Fields.

Ford, which has had a presence at CES for years and made a splash in 2007 with the introduction of the first Ford Sync, wants to be seen as part of the consumer electronics community. Of course, that’s easier now for an automotive company that at any time before in CES’s history.

“When you look at this year’s show, it’s really fascinating to see the unprecedented focus on cars,” said Fields.

To keep the company plugged into this community, Fields and Ford Group Vice President and CTO Raj Nair spend several days three or four times a year in Silicon Valley. They visit companies and incubators to learn and build new relationships.

Fields, who once worked for IBM in their PC division, told me Ford plans to “expand significantly” its Silicon Valley research center.

He recalled that in the late 80s everyone thought the car would become a computer on wheels. It didn’t happen. “Now, it really is and it’s opening up a whole set of opportunities for us as a business that I think are just as great as when Henry Ford started the company.”

On the agenda

In his CES keynote, Fields will talk through the new QNX-backed Sync 3, Ford’s next-generation connectivity system. Nair, who was in the car with us, called the QNX OS, “a really robust system used in a lot of mission critical operating systems.”

“We’ve had Sync in the marketplace for eight years now,” said Fields, “and we’ve used that time to listen to our customers. So when you look at Sync 3, [there has been] a lot of advances in terms of conversational commands – we’ve really enhanced the voice commands. It's easier to use, more intuitive in terms of the interface. More smartphone-like where you can pinch and slide.”

Fields will also hit another hot-button automotive topic: autonomous vehicles. “We have a lot of vehicles on the road today that have sensors and cameras and other technology that will allow, for example, automatic parking, adaptive cruise control, and when you’re in traffic, technology that allows you to adjust speed or even brake, depending on the traffic flow.”

He said he’ll also talk a bit about fully autonomous vehicles Ford has under development, but he didn’t offer much detail.

I asked Fields if he would let one of Ford’s future autonomous cars do all the driving, “Absolutely, of course, because Raj is going to engineer it, it’s going to be perfect,” answered Fields, laughing.

But how, I asked, will people who love cars, as Fields does, and love driving, give that up so a self-diving car can take over.

“It’s a really fundamental question for us, as a company,” said Fields.

Raj Nair interjected “We spend so much time on that aspect, ‘Fun to drive.’ How does that transition to ‘Fun to ride?’”

Nair noted that the dynamics of a vehicle benefit the driver, but if the driver is now also the passenger, does that change the experience and how they engineer the car?

“The emotional connection to the vehicle, how does that change when you’re not actually a driver of the vehicle?” asked Nair.

“And that’s why we’re not interesting in making a marketing claim or being the first in the race to have an autonomous vehicle. What we are interested in is that when we come out with our vehicle, it’s going to be right for the customer and it’s going to be accessible and affordable,” added Fields.

A changing world

Noting that Henry Ford’s vision was not just about products, but improving the world, Field’s said that they’ll spend some time Tuesday talking about using innovation to tackle some of “the world’s most pressing traffic challenges.”

Fields noted that the growth of mega-cities – cities with 10 million people or more (he said there are around 28 today and there could be 40 or more by 2031), will drive car purchases and the need for better, smarter traffic management strategies and technologies.

“We’ll talk about some concrete things we’re doing to address those challenges,” said Fields.

While Fields couldn’t reveal any of those plans ahead of his keynote, he did say that all of the announcements he’ll make tie together.

“I think it all ties together….It’s really an umbrella for a lot of those things: Connected cars, around autonomous vehicles, around ride sharing, around big data. I think it all is interconnected,” said Fields.

Fields is, by some people’s measure, stepping into petty large shoes – Mulally is, after all, often described as the guy who saved Ford. What does Fields think will be his legacy? What will define the “Fields Era” at Ford?

“One of the things I really want to stress in our company is not take our eye off the ball on product excellence and then how are we using innovation through our entire business to unleash even more business opportunities for us and to create better products and services for our customers.”

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